LEARNING GUIDE:  ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES (ACCOUNTABILITY)

OVERVIEW

In this lesson students in the various healthcare professions will examine how it is important for them to have knowledge of their own discipline, Disciplinary Articulation, which includes how they explain their role to healthcare team members from other professions. Additionally, students will broaden their understanding of the roles and responsibilities of other healthcare professions, and explore the concepts of role clarity and relational coordination.  As it turns out, students from all healthcare professions have knowledge deficits concerning roles and responsibilities.  They need to understand and demonstrate how to explain their knowledge of training, background, and expertise of their own profession as well those of their peer professionals from other disciplines. This content may be a review for some students, but it is intentionally included to strengthen a student’s professional identity development.

OBJECTIVES

For this lesson you will: 

1. Use the knowledge of one’s own role and those of other professions to assess the healthcare needs of patients (IPEC Competency 2 – Roles/Responsibilities).
2. Explain the similarities and differences among other health professions.
3. Become aware of stereotyping both positive and negative related to other health professions.
4. Develop an awareness concerning “inaccurate perceptions about diversity that prevents professions from taking advantage of full scope of abilities that working together offers to improve health care” (IPEC, 2011, p. 20).

COMPETENCIES

DEFINITIONS

Accountability – entails the procedures and processes by which one party justifies and takes responsibility for its activities (Emanuel & Emanuel, 1996).

Disciplinary Articulation– “the ability to clearly describe your own professional role and responsibilities to team members of other professions and understand others’ roles and responsibilities in relation to one’s own role” (IPEC, 2011, p. 20).

Relational Coordination– “While coordination is the management of interdependencies between tasks, relational coordination is the management of interdependencies between people who perform those tasks” (Gittell, 2011, p.15).

Responsibility – Job responsibilities refer to the duties and tasks of their particular roles. This is sometimes referred to as the job description (Rose, 2021).

Role – Roles refer to a person’s position on a team.  The individual roles that make up a team vary depending on the organization or business (Rose, 2021).

Role Clarity – “…is also essential to smooth-functioning, high performing groups.  Staff must know where the boundaries of their own jobs lie, what they are responsible for, accountable to, and what tasks they are to complete” ((Kaini, 2017, para 5).

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

• The following sources with study guides have been curated for student learning.
• For application and demonstration of learning, lab exercises can be found in the second half of this online education resource, Lab Exercises.

READ:  Interprofessional team collaboration in health care.

Study Guide:  Kaini discusses Interprofessional Team Collaboration overall, but for this source was included to expand the importance of understanding roles and responsibilities and their impact on collaboration.  Pay special attention to the section, Roles and Responsibilities of Health Care Professionals (pp. 2-4) that relationship between roles and tasks and role boundaries (role clarification and role overlap).

REFERENCE:  Kaini, B. K. (2017).  Interprofessional team collaboration in health care.  Global Journal of Medical Research:  K Interdisciplinary.  ISSN:  2249-4618

READ:  Interprofessional Care Competency Framework and Team Assessment

Study Guide:  The University of Toronto (2018) offers a brief summary of role clarification [role clarity] and why it is important as part of teamwork.  These authors state, “This understanding helps avoid duplication and gaps in service.  This enhances team work and enables all health professionals to work to their full scope of practice allowing more effective planning, implementation and evaluation of services” (para 2).

REFERENCE:  University of Toronto (2018, January 15).  Interprofessional Care Competency Framework and Team Assessment.

READ:  What is RC?-Relational Coordination

Study Guide:  The scholarship work of this organization is an outgrowth of Gittell’s work on relational coordination, a framework for collaboration to achieve improved work outcomes.

REFERENCE:  Relational Coordination Collaborative.  (2022, February 19).  What is RC?-Relational coordination.

READ:  Roles and responsibilities:  Why defining them is important. 

Study Guide:  Job responsibilities refer to the duties and tasks of their particular roles. This is sometimes referred to as the job description. Roles, however, refer to a person’s position on a team.  The individual roles that make up a team vary depending on the organization or business.

REFERENCE:  Rose, K. (2021, December 15).  Roles and responsibilities:  Why defining them is important.  Retrieved October 13, 2022, from https://www.betterup.com

READ:  What is accountability in health care?

Study Guide:  These authors offer background about what is meant by accountability as a healthcare professional.

REFERENCE:  Emanuel, E. J., & Emanuel, L. L. (1996).  What is accountability in health care? Annals of Internal Medicine,  24(2):229-39.

READ:  Health care roles

Study Guide:  This is a short summary of the roles and responsibilities of various healthcare professions.

REFERENCE:  Center for Health Interprofessional Practice at the University of Texas-Austin.  (2022).  Health Care Roles.  Retrieved October 13, 2022, from https://healthipe.utexas.edu/

LESSON REFERENCES

Gittell, J. H. (2011). Relational coordination: Guidelines for theory, measurement and analysis. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University, 1.

Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel.  (2011). Core competencies for interprofessional practice:  Report of an expert panel.  Washington, D.C.:  Interprofessional Education Collaborative